


clinging to a sin

by maq_moon



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, F/M, Halamshiral (Dragon Age), Hopeful Ending, The Author Regrets Everything, Vague Lavellan for your reading pleasure, real talk feat charter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:21:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28139088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maq_moon/pseuds/maq_moon
Summary: She didn’t want to die. She didn’t. But did she really have much of a life anyway? Who was she apart from the Anchor? The Inquisition? Everyone else had moved on, but she couldn’t. Because of her hand. She could never be just Ellana again. She was the Herald, Chosen of Andraste, the Inquisitor, forevermore. Her legacy wasn’t up to her, though. That was for storytellers like Varric. All she could do was stop the Qunari and their agent of Fen’Harel in the Crossroads before time caught up with her.{{or: Trespasser speed run, but with sass and extra gravitas and some light smut}}
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan, Fen’Harel | Solas/Female Inquisitor
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	clinging to a sin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silvander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvander/gifts).



> I present to you my first contribution to the solavellan fandom!  
> I was prompted by silvander, who is simultaneously one of my oldest and youngest friends because language is fun like that. She sent me [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDkhUpBkBT4), _Je Suis Malade_ , and *demanded* I write a fic based on it for the fandom of my choosing. My dear silvander has never played a single DA game, and her reactions when I laid out the entirety of the solasmance were GOLDEN. I wish I'd taken screencaps ;_; 
> 
> Oh! Side note, I'm not fond of reading the same dialogue over and over, so I didn't stick with the game's dialogue throughout. I wanted to give Lavellan a chance to pop off while still being invested in the relationship and I felt like the game didn't do that. *shrug*
> 
> Please do let me know what you think!

Nothing hurt more than the memory of their first fuck. It had been sloppy and inelegant, grasping hands tearing apart ridiculous uniforms, the both of them drunk on wine and victory. One of them knocked over a vase; it shattered beautifully in the moonlight-dappled halls of the Winter Palace. Bruising fingertips, clacking teeth, and that first thrust—his hand over her mouth to stifle her—the taste of his sweat—the thrill of knowing they could be found at any moment, two _rabbits_ going at it in a dark corner, their ears hiding their faces better than any Orlesian mask—

Orlais. Even now, sitting at her mirror, fussing with her hair, she couldn’t help but ruminate. How many dead elves had the Valmonts built their palace on? Had she done enough for her people by putting Briala in a position of power? What a fine manipulation that had been: a locket and a few whispers and the Empire was hers. Until now. She wondered if the restrictions Orlais wanted to impose upon the Inquisition were Briala’s idea. It’s what she would do if their roles were reversed. She closed her eyes against the anger, ancient and fresh. 

Ellana clenched her left fist. The nerves were tingling again. She’d have to ask Stitches for a stronger poultice recipe. She examined the Anchor. It still gleamed ethereally, a ghostly green spilling from a hairline fissure across her palm. There was nothing wrong with it, she thought. She’d been staring at the blighted thing for two years and counting. She turned her palm, putting her hand between her face and the still-rising sun. For the first time, Ellana understood what Dagna had meant when she called the Anchor pretty, or Leliana’s feint in Valence. _A thousand mirrors_ ; was that how the Sister had described the Breach? The sunlight spilling through the Anchor’s glow fractured and bent. The nerves tingled again, more of a sting this time. “Fenedhis,” she swore, covering the green light with a poultice and wrapping it awkwardly.

“Everything alright, my lady?’

Ellana jumped. “I didn’t hear you come in, Charter.”

“Good,” the spy said. “Nightingale would have my head. Speaking of,” Charter trailed off, taking in the room, “she’s a bit tied up. Thinks you should maybe speak to Mother Giselle and get your bearings. There—Maker, is that the same hideous uniform you wore to the peace talks?”

Nodding, Ellana glared at the shiny red and blue thing like it carried a plague. “Well, the same design.” The specific uniform she had worn that night had been torn by eager fingers in a corner not terribly far from here. Mythal’s mercy, it hurt to remember.

Charter arched one eyebrow. “I see. You’ve lost some inches since we were last at Halamshiral, if you don’t mind my saying, Inquisitor. Cook tells me you send your tray back almost untouched sometimes. You look as delicate as a bird. Is there anything you’d like to discuss?”

Arms crossed, a frowning Ellana turned to Charter. _I’m sick_ , she wanted to say. _I’m sick and I’m tired and I’m just going through the motions_. “Tell me what you dreamed last night,” she said instead, surprising herself. She turned back to her dressing table.

“I… couldn’t say for sure. Abstract things. The words and colors you forget when you wake.”

“I don’t dream anymore,” Ellana said perfunctorily. “I haven’t in some time.”

Charter nodded slowly. The sun struck her hair, bringing the warm strawberry color to the fore. “Since Messere Solas left?”

“Nothing so dramatic as that. No, I’m not quite that pathetic.” She chuckled and shook her head. “It was a few months later. After we killed Corypheus, and yes, incidentally when Solas left, my dreams got crazy. I dreamed about the gods—just Mythal, really. She would be giving me advice, I think, or warnings. And then she stopped. No more dreams. So I wonder sometimes…” Dust motes danced in the morning glow. Ellana looked away.

“If she comes to other elves,” Charter deduced. “Not that I’ve heard, but I’ll put out feelers.”

“Thank you, Charter.”

“Inquisitor, I have to get back to the Nightingale. Promise you’ll eat your fill. The Fereldens are here for blood, and Orlais is hiding her teeth behind her mask. You need to be at your best.”

Ellana nodded and dismissed Charter. She flinched as her hand burned despite being bound with a poultice. She gathered the shiny, ugly uniform from the bed and remembered the feel of Orlesian silk after that first time.

Solas hadn’t come to her room. That stung; she would have liked to wake him with a languid kiss, or be woken with one. Maybe they could have even made love on these fine Orlesian sheets, a stark contrast to rutting in a dark corner. But no, he’d wanted things to look proper in the morning, and it wouldn’t do to have “the Inquisitor’s elven serving man” wrapped around her when the servants came knocking. It was, of course, the prelude to a relationship of whispers and secrets. Their first coupling, that frantic fucking, had been so wild and open—and that was salt in the wound. Never again had Solas been quite so bestial, hungry. Their first fuck was their only one; everything that followed was tender. The memory burned, beautiful and wretched, and Ellana wondered if it would have been better if it had never happened at all.

The poultice seeped through its wrappings. Grimacing, she let the makeshift bandage and sludge slither off of her hand and onto an ostentatious carpet. It landed with a satisfying _splat_ , seeping into the myriad colors woven into the rug. Add this to the list of things she’d ruined in the Winter Palace. When she was dressed, she ground what remained of the poultice into the carpet with her boot.

* * *

“What do you wish to do with the Inquisition?”

Mother Giselle was hardly the first to ask the question, and she wouldn’t be the only one that day. Ellana anticipated variations of the thought from all the dignitaries, the Divine, and maybe even a few nugs, because that would be her luck. A memory stirred, just a few years old but harsh and grainy, painful because of what came after it. She’d stood in a chantry, the smell of incense overpowering, and asked for Inquisition history. _They fought horrific battles, killed and died for their cause, and when it was time, they put their swords away_. Ellana clenched her aching fist and sighed.

“You would have us disband,” she said. “I agree.”

* * *

When they found the body, the trail of Qunari blood, Ellana felt history repeating itself. She climbed a trellis (how had no one noticed her doing this during the peace talks?) and found herself staring at a mirror that offered no reflection. She held her breath. The eluvian shimmered as if the Qunari had just stepped out of it. Slowly she put forth one finger; it slid through the barrier. The eluvian was still active.

She ran theories through her head—Morrigan, Varric’s blood mage friend Merrill, Mythal—but each was undone by the dead Qunari. How had he gotten a key? And what was the key? She allowed herself a small smile. An adventure was just what she needed to take her mind off of the memories of Halamshiral.

She put on her armor quickly. It didn’t sit right; perhaps Charter was right about her health. As she pulled on a pair of gloves crafted from a particularly stubborn dragon’s hide, she noticed it: the Anchor was wrong. She couldn’t say exactly how. It had seemed normal when she woke, but now the Fade-green bled heavier. Ellana rolled up her sleeves and pressed her wrists together. She gagged. The veins on the inside of her left wrist were a sickly shade of green, simultaneously luminous and dark. Her breath hitched. How had she not noticed this? She’d been keeping it wrapped and bombarded with healing herbs; that probably covered the change. Or perhaps she suspected and had been deliberately obtuse, purposefully focusing only on her palm.

The dragonhide glove covered the glow unless she was actively using the Anchor. She jerked it on. There was a job to do, and she was still the Inquisitor. She could worry about her personal problems when the international issue was taken care of. Quietly.

* * *

Stepping through the eluvian was therapeutic. An energy unique to elves washed over her, refreshing her, as colors only she could see bloomed. She felt Bull’s stare; he never had outgrown the Qunari distrust for magic. Ellana winked at him and took point. She made a mental note to check her veins when he wasn’t looking. Maybe the magic of the Crossroads had healed them.

But of course it would be worse here. Of course the Anchor would hiss and spit and fry her palm with nary a rift in sight. Of course it would be a key, ferocious and burning, revealing painful truths with each turn. That had always been the way with the bloody thing. A vague half-memory passed of Dagna, years before, being the first to call the Anchor a key. The dwarf had pointed out that Ellana only used it to close things. “Oh, if only…” she muttered. If it had never opened those doors, she would never have known that her gods were no gods. She would never have known that they were essentially Magisters, sacrificing their subjects on the altar of vanity. She would never have felt this empty kind of doubt.

She didn’t need to look at her wrist to know that the Fade-green was still there, lurking in her blood. She felt it sludging higher, centimeter by agonizing centimeter. She remembered the day she woke up marked, a murder suspect, not yet a Herald. She remembered the first Rift she closed, and her astonishment-- _What did you do?_ \-- as though Solas had somehow controlled the spitting magic coming out of her. She remembered Varric, wry as ever: _He means he kept that mark from killing you while you slept_. A dry sob escaped her as they rushed back to the Winter Palace.

She wasn’t stupid. Sure, the Dalish didn’t have healers like those in the big shem cities, but they knew when things were going south. Unique magic was spreading fast, and the only person who could stop it had vanished two years prior. Ellana knew what was going to happen. She just didn’t know how to tell the others.

“It spits like fat from the fire, burns even hotter, I wish I wasn’t afraid. Falon’Din would have guided me to mamae and papae, but he isn’t who he was supposed to be. Who will guide my friends when I’m gone?”

“Please don’t say anything to them, Cole.”

“It would help.” He took her hand and rubbed soothing circles into her palm. His overlarge hat cast a shadow across both of them.

“Me or them?”

“Yes.”

“Will you help them, Cole? When I’m—when—”

“I want to help.”

“I know you do, sweet boy. You have helped. You do help. You are so precious to me.”

The skin between Cole’s eyes puckered as he considered. “You know I can hear it, but you said it aloud anyway. Why?”

Ellana smiled sadly. “Some things bear saying, even if a person already knows. It makes them extra real.” She pressed a kiss to Cole’s clammy cheek. “I have to go meet with the advisors.”

“Think about telling them. It will help.”

“Maybe.”

She had no intention of telling them. But Cullen yelled, Leliana got defensive, Josephine yelled _and_ was disappointed in her (a special kind of pain), and the fucking mark, the gods-damned Anchor, the reason she was Herald and Inquisitor and not just Ellana of Clan Lavellan, the reason Celene held her throne, the impetus for too much to quantify—the fucking thing exploded, and she screamed, and she was crying on the floor before she knew it. Cullen kept a respectful distance. Leliana helped her to her feet and petted her hair. Josephine reached out a hand.

“I don’t want to die,” Ellana said.

She didn’t want to die. She didn’t. But did she really have much of a life anyway? Who was she apart from the Anchor? The Inquisition? Everyone else had moved on, but she couldn’t. Because of her hand. She could never be just Ellana again. She was the Herald, Chosen of Andraste, the Inquisitor, forevermore. Her legacy wasn’t up to her, though. That was for storytellers like Varric. All she could do was stop the Qunari and their agent of Fen’Harel in the Crossroads before time caught up with her.

She wasn’t one for long goodbyes. “It has been an honor,” the Inquisitor said with as much dignity as she could muster. Dorian wiped a handkerchief across his eyes; he didn’t try to hide it. Bull clapped him on the shoulder with a quiet _kadan_. Cassandra stared stoically at the shimmering eluvian before them. They began the chase.

Such a chase it was! The Viddasala taunted and threw obstacle after monstrous obstacle at them. The adrenaline rush was exhilarating. Ellana could ignore her pain and fatalism among wave after wave of Qunari. There was a greater goal. A particularly nasty saarebas directed a spell at her (she’d always hated lightning; the purple flash hurt her eyes). She raised her left hand, expecting to call on Fade energy as she had always done—but something was wrong. The Anchor was getting fuller and fuller, and she couldn’t pull the energy—couldn’t do what the team had always jokingly called _Mark of the Rift_ , a silly name invented by Varric to make her laugh in dark moments. Her hand felt like it was going to burst like a firework.

And it did.

It knocked them all down, friend and foe, though the Qunari seemed considerably more damaged.

“Try not to do that again, dear!” Dorian called from across a sundered courtyard.

“I’ll figure it out,” she yelled, throwing an obscene gesture back at him. “I’ll figure it out,” she repeated, this time to herself.

The saarebas took his time dying, and brought along some demons for good measure. Ellana could move her hand and arm, but she couldn’t feel it as an appendage. Flexing her fingers around her weapon gave no sensation other than fire flaring nearly up to the elbow. She threw energy from the Anchor as the Viddasala stepped through the active eluvian towards Solas.

It was rubbish, of course, to think that Solas was an agent of Fen’Harel. He didn’t even believe in the gods, for starters. He had very angrily made his stance on this clear many times. Ellana seemed to be the only one who didn’t believe the Viddasala. Instead of relying on the emotional argument she would have made with perhaps anyone else, she stayed as neutral as possible. “Whatever else, Solas was our friend.”

She ran to the eluvian, felt its wavelengths vibrate over her, and heard a _snap_ as the glass sealed behind her. There wasn’t time to worry that she was alone, that she would die alone. There was only the statuary.

They were almost beautiful, these white statues, bellicose and grand, until one realized that they were living beings frozen in their last moments. Before questions had time to run behind her eyes, she heard his voice. The Viddasala was poised to attack, and then she too was a member of the grotesque museum of flesh made stone.

His name was a prayer and a curse. “Solas.” Because if he was here, the Viddasala had been right. He was an agent of the Dread Wolf. She might have laughed if the Anchor hadn’t taken that moment to flare up. She fell to her knees. Like that first day years ago, he stopped the pain with a touch of his hand. Ellana watched with fascination as he removed her glove and pressed his thumb to the center of her mark.

“That should give us some time,” he said casually, as if they’d seen one another yesterday. As if he hadn’t left without a word. As if he hadn’t left her bare-faced and brokenhearted. As if he wasn’t wearing gleaming armor fit for an emperor. “I suspect you have questions.”

Oh, she had questions. A million of them. They started with, “Want to explain what you did in Crestwood and why?” and ended with, “Why are you dressed like a golden god?” and every strange thing in between. She settled on the following:

“Are you aware that it’s been more than two years since you’ve said a word to me? Did you forget how to write? You could have sent a blighted letter. I was worried sick.”

Solas exhaled a short chuckle devoid of mirth. “Two years, three months, two weeks, and four days. And yes, I was told that you were ill.”

She did a double-take. “Ill? I haven’t been ill. Who said I was ill?”

He looked at her arm, frozen in place by his magic. “Does that not constitute being unwell? You’re not eating. You’re sleeping poorly.”

“Who told you all of this?”

He took a deep breath and got to his knees, meeting her eyes. “My spies in the Inquisition.”

Ellana closed her eyes and nodded. “Was the Viddasala telling the truth? Are you an agent of Fen’Harel?”

“I am no one’s agent but my own. I fear the truth is far simpler, and much worse, than the Qunari believe.”

“Fen’Harel,” Ellana whispered. “You’re him.”

“I was Solas first. I—”

“Where do you get off?” Ellana asked. “You were my rock, and when I needed you most you just up and left me in a wyvern’s den. When I wanted the courtesy of an explanation you said to ‘harden my heart’ and that you’d make everything clear if we both survived Corypheus. Well, we both survived and you fucked right off without a goodbye. Now, two years later, I’m actively dying and here you are, on the heels of the revelation that my entire religion is a lie. I don’t know who to pray to on my own deathbed. And if the gods aren’t real, how are you one of them? Talk fast, I don’t have long.”

Solas blinked rapidly. “I hardly know where to start. I’ve wounded you in many ways, _vhenan_ , and I could spend a century apologizing.” He glanced at her frozen arm. “I wanted to tell you the truth—the whole truth—when I took you to Crestwood. I am a coward. I looked at you, so beautiful and young and terribly mortal, and I knew I was doing you a disservice. I was being selfish in keeping you. I had to let you go. And when my orb broke in the battle—”

“Hang on, _your_ orb?”

He gave her the ugly truth. She bore it well. She listened with the patience he had come to expect from her, patience he had never expected from any mortal. He told her how generals become gods. He told her that in _uthenera_ he had engineered the magic in her hand. He told her of the Great Betrayal and the raising of the Veil; she nodded along, understanding that every alternative truly must have been worse. When he told her that he intended to pull down the Veil and release the false gods, she deflated. _Burning in the raw chaos…_

“I never thought of you as someone who would do that, Solas.” His quiet _thank you_ wasn’t enough. “Are we not even people to you?”

“Not at first. You showed me that I was wrong… again.”

Ellana shook her head slightly. “I always felt small next to you, like a little bird struggling to keep up. Now I know why. I’m a sacrifice.” Her hand, still frozen in place, started to itch.

“No, my heart. Never think yourself lesser than anyone.”

She smiled sadly. “But I’m no better than anyone either, ma lath. If they burn, I deserve to burn with them. We’re all of us sacrifices to the gods you’re bringing back.”

“They’re not truly gods—”

“And we’re sacrifices nonetheless.”

They locked eyes. There was no challenge, nor an attempt at understanding. He had his goals. She had to counter them. His eyes were changed. They were still thin and slanted, the color of the sea on a stormy day, but something lingered behind them that hadn’t before. A power thrummed, something Ellana had seen in only one other person: Mythal. Before she could consider this, invisible flames flew up her immobile arm.

She screamed, guttural and primal. Solas rested his forehead against hers, wrapped his hand around her left arm just below the elbow. Her arm became heavy, stone-heavy, but it didn’t matter because he was kissing her.

Had he always kissed like this? He seemed a man parched, desperate to get drunk on the whiskey of her mouth. His tongue was a benediction, sliding against her own. Ellana bit down gently, eliciting a groan. She raked the fingers of her free hand down the back of his skull. Her dragonhide gloves would leave marks; good. She didn’t want him forgetting her again. The softness of his lips left with a quiet smack.

“I will never forget you,” he said, as if he had heard her thoughts. He pulled gently on her heavy arm.

 _Oh no you don’t_ , she thought between sobs. “Var lath vir suledin!” she promised.

“My love,” he whispered with reverence, “if only it could.” She felt a tug on her left. Her vision swam. He said something else, a spell perhaps, and her senses faded.

She woke in her bed in the Winter Palace, the taste of him still on her tongue. When she tried to push herself up, she found her left arm considerably shorter.

* * *

Ellana stormed into the Exalted Council. Those noble prigs looking down at her seemed surprised. Whether it was her demeanor or her residual arm, tucked neatly into a pinned sleeve, that caught their eyes, she couldn’t say. She didn’t much care. She had their attention; that was what mattered. They stopped bickering about the Dread Wolf and turned to Inquisition oversight. She didn’t let them get far.

“You know what this is,” she declared, holding out a book. “It is a writ from Divine Justinia authorizing the creation of an Inquisition.” She saw Cassandra smile. “We’re not going anywhere.”

She may have felt ill only a few days prior, may have only gone through the motions of life, may have lost sight of herself, but she had a purpose again. She wasn’t the Herald or the Inquisitor anymore. She was Ellana, the person who knew Solas best, and she had to save him from himself. If it took every ounce of her strength, if every drop of blood in her body was poured into this endeavor, if she made herself sick—it would all be worth it if Solas came back. He was not the type of person who wanted the world to burn. He just needed to be reminded of it.

Nothing hurt worse than the memory of their first fuck, not even the scar of their last kiss. But it was memories, old and new, that would bring sense back to Fen’Harel. She was real. They were all real, every _durgen’len_ and _shem_ and elf and, yes, even those who followed the Qun. When she slept and the Wolf came to her, she did for him what he had once done for her. She shared her memories. Barricaded within her mind, he had no choice but to hear her. Dawn brought his absence and a certain emptiness, but Ellana clung to the knowledge that he would return every night, giving her one more chance to continue their story.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> There's one bit in the song, _Et ça va faire bientôt **deux ans** que tu t’en fous_, that made me scream DAMMIT SOLAS.
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](https://maq-moon.tumblr.com) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/maq_moon), where I reblog/retweet/like fan things and joke things. Sometimes I say things, too.
> 
> Please leave a contribution in the little box! I love talking to people in comments ^^


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